• (Published as “If we want energy for all, we need to stop wasting it”)

A 2018 study found global energy demand by 2050 could be 40 per cent lower than now if all known energy efficiencies were implemented

Dr. Trevor Hancock

12 September 2023

699 words

The fifth great turnaround proposed by the Earth For All (E4A) initiative of the Club of Rome is a complete restructuring of our energy system. But it’s more than that, since energy is so bound up in all we do. Energy has powered our civilization ever since we first learned to use fire to warm us, cook and scare off predators.

As we moved through the ages of wood, coal, oil, gas and nuclear we accumulated more and more ‘energy servants’. Today, by one estimate, every American has at their command the equivalent of roughly 150 servants working 24/7 every day of the year, and that does not seem to include the energy used outside America making all the stuff that is acquired.

So transforming our energy system also means transforming our way of life, our societies and our economies. In their chapter on The Energy Turnaround, E4A’s authors discuss among other things “a shift to more conscious production, and to consuming less”, as well as the need for a circular economy and manufacturing practices to both recycle materials and use less materials in products.

At the heart of their proposed strategy lies greater energy and resource efficiency.  As is the case with food, as I noted last week, we waste a lot of energy. Earth For All cites a 2018 study in Nature Energy by Arnulf Grubler and colleagues that found global energy demand by 2050 could be 40 percent lower than now if all known energy efficiencies were implemented, in spite of population increases and rising affluence.

Greater efficiencies stem from improving our buildings and changing our transportation systems, E4A stresses. Improved insulation is “a better solution than adding air conditioning or heaters”, daylighting buildings is better than using lights, refurbishing is better than demolishing buildings. We also need to redesign our cities for walkability and livability, aiming for denser development, public transportation and “smaller vehicles, and fewer vehicles on the roads.”

Those vehicles should be electric, as should pretty much everything else. Indeed “electrify (almost) everything” is their second proposed solution: “we should substitute carbon molecules with electrons wherever something needs energy.”

They address a number of myths put forward mainly by the fossil fuel industry and their allies: No, energy transitions are not slow, and we are midway through this transition, at the point where renewable energy is as cheap as fossil fuels, or cheaper, in many places. No, many sectors are not hard to electrify, the technologies to do so exist. No, it is not difficult to change people’s behavior, and no, clean energy is not intermittent and unreliable, if proper planning is done.

In fact, “the solutions are market-ready”, although we do need to ensure that the new minerals mining that is needed does not exploit poor nations or vulnerable people, and does not create land degradation and pollution. Part of that mitigation, of course, is that greater efficiency reduces demand and its accompanying harms.

Earth For All’s third proposed solution is an exponential growth in new renewables. Wind and solar, they point out, doubled from 5 percent of all global electricity production in 2016 to 10 percent in 2021. At that rate, they note, these technologies could supply half of all electricity in the early 2030s, especially as costs decline about 20-25 percent for each doubling of installed capacity.

Another energy source to consider is ultradeep geothermal energy, which has caught the attention of Thomas Homer-Dixon and his colleagues at the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. This involves creating heat-exchange reservoirs in hot, dry rock more than 5 kilometres below Earth’s surface. These geothermal power plants, they write, “could be built nearly anywhere on Earth and provide an essentially limitless supply of net-zero power.” By pioneering this approach, they suggest, Canada could become a deep geothermal superpower.

Not only will these changes help us avoid the worst of climate change, they will also result in cleaner air and better health, especially in low and middle-income countries, who will need both techological and financial support to make these changes. But as the countries with the highest carbon footprints, high-income countries such as Canada need to lead the way towards energy for all.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

(Published as “We need to change the way we farm — and eat”)

A more plant-based, low-meat diet has many health and ecological benefits, including requiring less land per person, so it can be farmed more sustainably.

Dr. Trevor Hancock

4 September 2023

701 words

The first three of the five ‘great turnarounds’ in the Club of Rome’s ‘Earth for All’ report are concerned with addressing different aspects of inequality. But the final two, to which I now turn, are concerned with two of the most fundamental determinants of our health; food and – next week – energy.

The Earth For All report notes: “The way we farm, transport and consume food affects more planetary boundaries than anything else.” They go on to list these impacts, which include climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss – including widespread depletion of fish stocks, massive use of freshwater, and pollution from fertilisers, pesticides and animal wastes.

Those ecological changes cut both ways, with the effects of climate change – high temperatures, droughts and floods – threatening agriculture in many parts of the world. The risk of ‘breadbasket failures’ are real and growing.

Indeed, the lead author of a recent article in Nature Communication, titled “Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections” told AFP that the study should be a “a wake-up call in terms of our uncertainties.”

But climate and other ecological changes are not the only factors threatening the stability and resilience of what is, in fact, a rather fragile global food system. The system depends upon a relatively small number of countries and staple products, many grown as monocultures with little genetic variety, while an unhealthy and environmentally harmful Western diet is pushed by narrow commercial interests.

As we have seen in Ukraine, a relatively small local war can affect food availability and prices around the world, especially in many vulnerable low-income countries, potentially triggering social unrest and mass migration, and threatening democracy. 

“We face a triple challenge in agriculture”, the Earth For All report concludes: “Produce more healthy food, without destroying the planet, while building resilient production systems that are able to withstand rising shocks.” And the report goes on to suggest three solutions.

The first is to revolutionize the way we farm. Given that we already use half of all land for agriculture and other purposes, this starts with not expanding the conversion of forests and other natural lands to agriculture. In fact we need to grow more food on less land, while restoring natural systems.

Farmlands must become carbon sinks, not carbon emitters, they must enhance not erode biodiversity and they must restore the health of the soil. This is an approach known as regenerative agriculture. It must be complemented by advanced technologies for managing agriculture efficiently, including ‘vertical farming’ in cities.

The second solution is to change our diets. The Western diet, marketed around the world, is bad for health and for the planet. A more plant-based, low-meat diet – such as the new Canada Food Guide proposes – has many health and ecological benefits. In particular it requires less land per person, which reduces the pressure on land, allowing it to be farmed more sustainably. 

Finally, we need to eliminate food loss and waste, which can also reduce the pressure on land. The FAO estimates that globally about one third of food is lost or wasted. In high-income countries we over-consume and portion size is too large, fueling obesity, and we discard too much edible food because it is blemished. In low-income countries, better storage, refrigeration and transportation is needed to reduce losses.

Here on Vancouver Island, most of our food is imported, and we have only enough food land to supply about 10 percent of our needs, according to Professor Rick Kool at Royal Roads University, although that could be more with a low-meat diet. The good news is that increasing the uptake of regenerative practices is one of the objectives of BC’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food, while the Sundown Centre in North Saanich provides a hub for regenerative agricultural practices in the region.

In addition, The City of Victoria is a founding partner in the ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign, a national program to reduce food waste in Canada. The City is also home to the Zero Waste Emporium, Vancouver Island’s first Zero Waste grocery store. But the big challenge is changing our diets and changing our over-consumption practices; we still have a long way to go!

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

We are far from gender equality globally, and still have some way to go in Canada

Dr. Trevor Hancock

29 August 2023

701 words

Last week I discussed the need for a reduction in inequality within nations as the second of five ‘great turnarounds’ proposed in the Earth For All report. The third turnaround needed to ensure a socially just transformation is the empowerment of women and the achievement of gender equity.

The report’s authors stress the need for improvement in “women’s access to education, economic opportunities and dignified jobs, and all life’s chances that these bring.” The education and empowerment of women and their involvement in the economy, they note, is strongly linked to reduced fertility rates and a reduction in population size.

This point was emphasized by Per Espen Stoknes, Earth For All project lead and director of the Centre for Sustainability at the Norwegian Business School. It is the main factor behind their prediction that the population would peak at 8.6 billion in 2050 (we just passed 8 billion) before declining to 7 billion in 2100.

Gender equality is the fifth of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed upon by all the nations of the world, including Canada, in 2015. There are six outcome targets under this Goal, including ending all forms of discrimination against women and girls; ending violence and exploitation of women and girls; eliminating harmful practices such as child early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation, and ensuring access to universal reproductive rights and health.

The latest report on Goal 5 from UN Women, the UN organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, was in 2022. It found “the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030”. Indeed, at the current rate of change, the report noted, “it may take another 286 years to remove discriminatory laws and close prevailing gaps in legal protections for women and girls.”

The report highlights the importance of educating girls and young women, noting it is “integral to virtually every aspect of development, including economic growth and prosperity.” These benefits, decades of research has shown, include “faster poverty reduction, better maternal health, lower child mortality, greater HIV prevention and reduced violence against women.”

A fact sheet in the report highlights that violence against women and girls remains commonplace. Shockingly, globally, one woman or girl is killed by someone in her own family every 11 minutes, while globally, one in eight women and girlsaged 15-49 was subjected to sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner in the previous year.

Clearly there is a long way to go in achieving gender equality in many parts of the world, as highlighted by recent events in Afghanistan, in which women are denied education and employment, or in Iran, where there are many restrictions on women; similar restrictions are seen in many other parts of the world,

Here in Canada, not only is gender equality a fundamental human right, the Government of Canada states, it is “a necessary foundation for a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.” As part of its commitment, in 2019, the government established a Ministry of Women and Gender Equality.

Canada’s aims, according to the federal government, are to eliminate gender-based violence and harassment, support gender equality in leadership roles and at all levels of decision-making and ensure that Canadians, and those who live here, share responsibilities within households and families.

The Government of Canada introduced the Gender Results Framework in 2018 to provide data on gender equality within 6 main areas: education and skills development; economic participation and prosperity; leadership and democratic participation; gender-based violence and access to justice; poverty reduction, health and well-being; and gender equality around the world.

Regrettably, however, while there is lots of data in extensive tables, it is not user-friendly and I could not find a useful summary or compilation on their website, nor could I find an annual report. However, the Canadian Women’s Foundation notes that women working full-time and part-time make 89 cents for every dollar men make, that women, especially single mothers are more likely to live in low-income households than men, and that one in ten women are concerned about the possibility of violence in the home.

Clearly, we are far from gender equality globally, and still have some way to go in Canada.

© Trevor Hancock, 2023

thancock@uvic.ca

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the

University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy